The Book of Art for Young PeopleConway, Agnes Ethel
General
The Book of Art for Young People
Conway, Agnes Ethel
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painting
One needs a magnifying-glass to see everything there is to be seen
in the landscape through the window on the left. Besides the city with
its towers and walls and the mountains behind, there is a river in
the foreground where two little people are sitting in a boat. Observe
every tiny stone in the pavement, and every open page of the books
on the shelves. Here, too, is breadth in the handling. Hold the book
far away from you, so that the detail of the picture vanishes and only
the broad masses of the composition stand out. You still have what
is essential. The picture is one in which Italian feeling and sentiment
blend with Flemish technique and love of little things. There has
always been something of a mystery about the picture, and you must
not be surprised some day if you hear it asserted that Antonello did
not paint it at all. Such changes in the attributions of unsigned
paintings are not uncommon.
One of the greatest pioneer artists of the fifteenth century was Andrea
Mantegna of Padua in the north of Italy. More than any other painter
of his day, he devoted himself to the study of ancient sculpture, even
to the extent of sometimes painting in monochrome to imitate the actual
marble. Paintings by him, which look like sculptured reliefs, are in
the National Gallery; and at Hampton Court is a series of cartoons
representing the Triumph of Julius Caesar, in which the conception
and the handling are throughout inspired by old Roman bas-reliefs.
In other pictures of his, the figures look as though cast of bronze,
for he was likewise influenced by the sculptors of his own day,
particularly by the Florentine Donatello, one of the geniuses of the
early Renaissance. Mantegna's studies of form in sculpture made him
an excellent draughtsman. Strangely enough, it was this very severe
artist who was, perhaps, the first to depict the charm of babyhood.
Often he draws his babes wrapped in swaddling clothes, with their
little fingers in their mouths, or else in the act of crying, with
their eyes screwed up tight, and their mouths wide open. Such a
combination of hard sculpturesque modelling with extreme tenderness
of feeling has a charm of its own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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